Tags

Everyone’s tags

Biography

Scott Walker (born Noel Scott Engel; January 9, 1943) is an American-born singer-songwriter, composer and record producer. He is noted for his distinctive baritone voice and for the unorthodox career path which has taken him from 1960s pop icon to 21st century avant-garde musician.

Originally coming to fame in the mid-1960s singing orchestral pop ballads as the frontman of The Walker Brothers, Walker went on to a solo career balancing a light entertainment/MOR ballad approach with increasing artistic innovations in arrangement and writing perspective.
Despite a series of acclaimed albums, a disastrous drop in sales forced him back into straight Middle of the road recordings with little of his own artistic input. This in turn eventually led to a Walker Brothers reunion in the mid-1970s (although the latter eventually moved, by mutual consent, into more avant-garde areas).

Since the mid-1980s Walker has revived his solo career while drastically reinventing his artistic and compositional methods, via a series of acclaimed and vividly avant-garde albums. These combine his iconic singing voice with an unsettling avant-garde approach owing more to modernist and post-modernist classical composition than it does to his pop singer past. The change in approach has been compared to “Andy Williams reinventing himself as Stockhausen”.

Walker has been a continuing influence on other artists, in particular The Last Shadow Puppets, Marc Almond, Goldfrapp, Douglas Pearce of the band Death in June, Billy MacKenzie of The Associates, David Sylvian, Julian Cope

Nearly everything Scott Walker has recorded is worthwhile and brimming with creativity (with the possible exception of the tossed-off stuff from the early 70s which, even then, is not without its pleasures) but for me his best work can be found on albums 1-4. They aren't as innovative/avantgarde as recordings like The Drift and Tilt but they are beautiful albums with songs ranging from giddy, goofy and joyful to pathetic, frightening and soul-crushingly depressing, and Scott's vocals throughout those four albums are among the best of twentieth century popular music. I have all the respect in the world for Scott Walker as an artist and for his most recent works but those first four albums are the ones I reach for most often when I want to listen to him.

Charmander0 > He hasn't done anything live after getting traumatized by it in the 70's or smth like that. He has considered it with his newer stuff but I've understood he has it in such a grand scale in his mind that no one would back it financially. If I remember correctly he's also concerned people would come for the wrong reasons (60's vs. the new stuff). But it's a dream... I would travel anywhere anytime to be able to see him live! *_*